Reading Time – 5 minutes

If you’re an American, I’m going to ask you a question, and as soon as you see the question I want you to immediately identify the feeling that your mind registers as soon as you feel it.

(If you’re not an American, play along anyway and watch the experiment.)

In other words, I don’t want you to “think” about the question. I want you to practice self-awareness (which is hard today for most Westerners) and see how you feel the split second you see the question.

Ready?

Here it is:

What if Trump became the supreme leader of the USA, able to do whatever he wanted without Congress, the Constitution, the mainstream media, and stuff like that?

Identify what you’re feeling.

Before I get into the analysis, I have to first exclude those of you who are left-wingers and hate Donald Trump because we already know how you feel about this question.

So for you guys, here’s a different question:

What if Barack Obama or Bernie Sanders (pick your favorite) deposed Trump and became the supreme leader of the USA, able to do whatever he wanted without Congress, the Constitution, the mainstream media, and stuff like that?

For you left-wingers, how did your brain react to that question?

Here’s what I think, and I’m 95% sure I’m right about this…

The majority of you who are right-wingers and who like Trump at least to some degree reacted with a brief moment of approval when I asked that question about Trump.

I think most of you, not all of you, but most of you right-wingers immediately thought something like, “Heh, actually, that’d be pretty cool.”

And I’m sure some of you, once you thought about it for more than about 2-3 seconds, came to your senses and added something like, “Yeah, but then that would be a dictatorship so that would be bad,” or “We can’t have something like that in America, even though that would be pretty cool.”

But regardless, your first thought was positive.

Wasn’t it?

You know I’m right.

It’s the same with you anti-Trumpers. When I posed the Obama/Sanders question, I think most of you, not all of you, but most of you left-wingers immediately thought something like, “Hm, that’d be pretty cool.”

And then after a few seconds, you probably thought something like, “Well, as long as there was still a democracy or something like that, because democracy is the cornerstone of blah blah blah…”

If I were a billionaire with lots of free time on my hands, I would commission an objective, fact-based, peer-reviewed, scientific study analyzing modern-day collapsing Americans to find out what percentage of Americans who have strong political opinions harbor secret (or not so secret) pro-authoritarian views.

I’m 95% positive that if I did that, the result would be way more than 60%. Possibly as high as 80% or even more.

I’m serious and I’m being literal. I’m at least 95% sure (which means there’s a 5% chance I could be wrong, which I admit) that 60-80% of Americans in 2025, politically left, right, or center, would like it if their favorite person in politics somehow took power, became dictator for life, disbanded Congress and the Constitution, prevented the mainstream media from saying things they didn’t like, and just started running shit unilaterally.

The people on the opposite political side would, of course, be horrified and could even revolt, resulting in violence. But that doesn’t matter because 60-80% of those people would also like it if their person were the one who took power. So they’re just a bunch of hypocrites.

It’s like when someone says, “He’s not sad he cheated on his wife. He’s just sad he got caught.”

The reason I know most Americans feel this way is because of the literally hundreds of political conversations I’ve had with right-wingers and left-wingers in real life and online since 2012.

From the left, I’ve heard numerous people say things like:

• We should just fucking ban capitalism. (Stated seriously, not as a joke.)
• No one should be allowed to own any guns. That’s why we have the police!
• Communism (or true socialism) does work. It didn’t fail, it was defeated! We can do it right.
• The government should control what Fox News says.
• We can’t have free speech. I mean, c’mon, you can’t just say whatever you want. What about hate speech???

From the right, I’ve heard numerous people say things like:

• You’ve got to admit that a dictatorship, as long as it was under Donald Trump, would be pretty awesome.
• America should be a Christian theocracy; that would solve all these problems.
• All these woke people should just be thrown in prison. (Stated seriously, not as a joke.)
• I wish Putin would come run the United States.
• We can’t have free speech. I mean, c’mon, you can’t just say whatever you want. Kids might be watching! And what about Jesus???

And on, and on, and on.

I think the small percentage of modern-day Americans who don’t have any pro-authoritarian views fall into two tiny categories:

1. Those Americans who are 100% non-political, apathetic, and have no views on politics whatsoever. This is not a very big category of Americans because even stupid, ignorant Americans have strong political opinions these days, even if they don’t know anything about them. (I love watching these young Gen Z girls rant about things like Israel, Ukraine, and unions on Instagram.)

2. People like me, true libertarian-minded Americans who have already left the country in disgust. (Or who haven’t yet but who are planning to do so ASAP.)

I can think of one possible response to what I’m saying from someone who doesn’t know anything about Dubai: Caleb, you’re against authoritarianism but you live in Dubai?!?

Correct, because:

1. Dubai in 2025 is not authoritarian; it certainly isn’t a democracy but if you add everything up, I have more day-to-day freedoms and experience less government interference in my life living in the 2025 version of Dubai than I did living in the Collapsing USA, as I’ve shown in great detail on my social media content many times before when I compare and contrast those two countries.

2. It’s a fact that the leaders of the UAE, despite their flaws, have a 40-year track record of getting most of the big things right. (Go to Dubai and look around if you don’t believe me.) Has any political leader in the last 40 years in the USA had anywhere near that kind of track record? And yeah, I’m including Trump, Obama, Bernie Sanders, or any other leader you may worship.

3. Western business owners who move to Dubai do not move there because they want to live in an authoritarian country. They move there for the exact opposite reason, because they want to be left alone. They want to do what they want without the government running their lives, futures, or businesses. They don’t want to live in a place like USA, Canada, or the UK where the government is up their ass all the time.

Per my usual disclaimer, I have to state that Dubai isn’t perfect and it isn’t for everyone. Irrelvant to my point, which is that I think most Americans are closet authoritarians who would really like a dictator-like ruler who took charge of the USA as long as it was one of the fucked-up American political leaders they like or agree with on most of the issues.

In my book Freedom Fortress I said that one of the possible five collapse scenarios for the West was a descent into authoritarianism. I stated in that book that I thought this was one of the least likely collapse scenarios (economic collapse triggered by a currency crisis being the most likely) but that I had to admit this was a real and distinct possibility because in the past, Westerners have gleefully embraced authoritarianism when things got bad.

And things are bad, and going to get worse.

And they might do it again.

Because it’s secretly what they want.

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